Tour The Avenger With XCOM 2's New Controller Support

As the Commander in XCOM 2 [official site] played simulated battles from inside what was essentially a combination onesie/bubblebath/bed, why shouldn’t you slump on the sofa to play? A new patch today has added proper controller support to Firaxis’s turn-based tactical alienblaster. It may be handy for sofaplay, for giving that clawed mousehand a rest, and for players with certain disabilities. The makers suggest another use too: using a controller with the debug camera to have a nosey through the Avenger, seeing what your soldiers are up to.Controller support is the headline feature of today’s patch, made for Xbox 360 and Xbone pads. Fiddling may be required for other pads, or not! You know your hardware better than I. XCOM 2 has supported the Steam Controller all along but, y’know, that’s a weird lapmouse – different thing.

The update also fixes a problem that was keeping total conversions from being distributed on the Steam Workshop, and adds support for mods including videos. A few other bugs are fixed too, including some apparently minor enough to not detail. Big performance improvements have still not materialised.

Do be aware that some players are reporting this update has broken some/many/all mods for them. That’s not unheard of for updates and many modders will surely scramble to fix things but, er, you might want to keep Steam in offline mode or otherwise avoid updating if you have a modded game on the go right now.

As for the Avenger tour, it is a bit of a fuss but does look nice. Follow these instructions to install the SDK, enable the debug camera, and grab a controller to take some very fancy screenshots or wander the Avenger. Here’s XCOM 2 creative director Jake Solomon to explain: